Internet of Things (IoT)

North Pole Engineering has launched heartbeatz, a new device that acts as a bridge between an Apple Watch and any exercise bike or treadmill with ANT+. This enables the machine in question to display heart rate information directly from the wearable while in use. No more checking your wrist during a workout!

According to multiple outlets, some games on Google's Stadia streaming service are not rendered natively at 4K, like Google advertised them to be. Rather, some titles are rendered at lower resolutions and then upscaled to 4K once the data is sent to a gamer's Chromecast Ultra. This and a myriad of other complaints have left black marks on Stadia's first impression.

AT&T now maintains specific bands for internet of things (IoT) devices and other low-power 4G/LTE applications. To this end, the carrier has just validated the new 9205 modem for these kinds of networks and ecosystems. This Qualcomm SoC is designed to be half as big as its predecessor, while using 70% less power and 40% fewer resources.

TheGodThings claims that the PrinCube is the smallest mobile colour printer on the market. Better still, the device can print on all surfaces and fits in the palm of your hand. The PrinCube costs US$109 and ships next month.

The LattePanda is now available to purchase worldwide. The powerful single-board computer (SBC) incorporates an Intel Celeron N4100 processor, 4 GB of LPDRR4 RAM and 32 GB of eMMC 5.0 flash storage. The SBC supports USB Power Delivery via Type-C, has two M.2 PCIe slots and has an Arduino co-processor on board, along with two 50-pin headers and three USB 3.0 ports. The LattePanda Delta 432 is compatible with Windows, Linux and other OSes and retails for US$188.00.

Despite the ongoing trade war between the U.S. and China, Huawei received a small reprieve in the way of a general license allowing U.S. firms to transact with the Chinese telecom giant. That license is set to expire on Monday, but sources familiar with the matter claim the U.S. Department of Commerce will extend the license by six months.

NUVIA, a new company founded by three former executives with experience in designing and manufacturing Apple CPUs and SoCs, has officially been announced. NUVIA will manufacture hardware for use in data centers with a focus on delivering more powerful silicon that runs significantly more efficiently than existing chips from AMD and Intel. The venture has currently raised $53 million from companies like Dell.

John Carmack, the creator of Doom and a pioneer of virtual reality, is stepping down as the CTO of Oculus to focus on artificial general intelligence, which can be considered a super-powered version of artificial intelligence. Carmack will work from his home to develop machine intelligences that learn like humans do rather than through algorithms.

Machine learning is already making its way into IoT devices, as Google and Asus are now collaborating to release single board computers the size of credit cards. Even though they are small, these devices are powerful enough to enable AI-assisted applications for image recognition and upscaling.

Intel unveiled its upcoming vision processing unit (VPU) for edge computing devices. Dubbed Keem Bay, the new chip offers major improvements over existing VPUs from Nvidia and Huawei. Additionally, Keem Bay offers better performance with a significantly lower power draw.

Google's Stadia game streaming service is coming November 19. The service will initially launch with 12 games (listed below) and will eventually gain 14 more before the end of the year. Only those that purchased a Stadia Founder's Edition bundle will be able to access the service on November 19.

Akash Palkhiwala is Qualcomm's new CFO (or chief financial officer). His appointment comes following a stint as the company's interim CFO, as well as the senior vice president and finance head of its CDMA tech division. Palkhiwala will now be in a position to help lead the chipmaker into its 5G era.

The NVIDIA Jetson Nano is one of the most powerful SBCs on the market, but it only passively cools its 128 CUDA core and 472 GFLOPS-capable GPU. Now 52Pi, the company behind the ICE Tower Raspberry Pi CPU cooling fan, has returned with a version for the Jetson Nano complete with two 5 mm copper cooling tubes. The cooling solution replaces the pre-installed heatsink on the Jetson Nano and ships globally for US$24.90.

The Rock Pi S has finally made it to market, after being announced this summer. The miniature SBC is underpinned by a Rockchip RK3308 quad-core SoC, either 256 or 512 MB of RAM and 1 GB of NAND flash storage. The board has a microSD card slot too, Wi-Fi connectivity and a 26-pin GPIO header among other features. The Rock Pi S measures just 3.8 x 3.8 cm and starts at US$9.90. Orders will begin shipping globally from November 12.

Qualcomm has announced the 9205 LTE modem, a new component destined for internet-of-things (IoT) devices that will connect using this kind of mobile data. However, it will not require a conventional SIM to do so. The OEM has integrated Deutsche Telekom's novel nuSIM platform instead, which goes directly on a chipset to save on device footprint and circuitry.

The Arduino MKR WAN 1310 developer board can bring LoRa connectivity to projects without requiring continuous mains power. The board is just 67.6 x 25.0 mm and integrates an ARM Cortex M0+ processor. The MKR WAN 1310 is available to order now for €33 (~US$37).

The latest pico-ITX motherboard from Gigabyte comes with an embedded Celeron N3350 dual-core SoC that is powerful enough for video decoding loads. Users have the possibility to add up to 8 GB of LPDDR3-1866 RAM, a SATA HDD and an mSATA PCIe SSD, plus an m.2 Wi-Fi module. The diminutive motherboard is smaller than a high-end smartphone.

Intel has released its new low-power solution in full today (October 24, 2019). It is an x86 microarchitecture associated with "significant" IPC enhancements compared to its predecessor. Tremont can also support an L2 cache of up to 4.5MB, as well as crypto acceleration that includes dual 128-bit AES units. It is pitched at IoT, server, client and connectivity applications.

Qualcomm's Venture division has announced the implementation of the 5G Ecosystem Fund, a source of investment worth up to US$200 million. As the name suggests, it will help support start-ups involved in new, innovative and potentially lucrative applications of the new mobile-data standard. The company also intends the new fund to help get 5G in devices besides smartphones.

Previously thought to be launched in early-2020, the Gemini Lake Refresh CPUs are now expected to release in late-2020 with higher clocks and possibly upgraded iGPUs. New leaks unveil the specs for three new 10 W TDP J-series and three new 6 W TDP N-series processors designed for mini PCs and budget laptops.

A firmware update pushed out to Google Home and Google Home Mini smart speakers earlier this month has been bricking devices, leaving them completely unresponsive. Google has acknowledged the problem and promised a resolution in the near future. Unfortunately, the tech giant is apparently not replacing out-of-warranty devices.

In a blog post published today, Google claims that its 54-qubit quantum computer Sycamore calculated a complex problem in 200 seconds. The company also estimates the same problem would take the world's fastest supercomputer 10,000 years to solve. However, IBM (who owns the world's fastest supercomputer) says the estimate should be closer to 2.5 days. Either way, Google's achievement is a big milestone for quantum computing.

According to a Bloomberg report, Apple is planning on releasing its rumored AR glasses sometime in 2020. The glasses, while still in development, may eventually become a replacement product of the iPhone. However, a lot of work remains to be done, including the development of a "killer application."

Tremont is a collective name for Intel's next-gen SoCs developed for mobile, low-end and IoT devices. Currently, they are thought to have a microarchitecture based on a 10 nanometer (nm) process. The Linley Group now asserts that this will be confirmed or denied at its upcoming conference in Santa Clara, California.

The industrial-grade rugged enclosure made of aluminum featured with the Mini Multi Display PC does not come with any active cooling in order to protect against dust, debris and moisture. The system is powered by AMD's Ryzen Embedded V1605B APU with integrated Vega 8 GPU that supports four 4K video connections, and can be equipped with up to 32 GB of DDR4-3200 RAM and up to 2 TB M.2 SSD storage.

New research has shown that the market for semiconductors is estimated to grow to US$573 billion in 5 years. This may be driven by a demand for these materials in wireless communications, vehicles and online connectivity. However, the common-or-garden integrated circuit will continue to influence the market into the next decade.

AMD recently unveiled a roadmap for its EPYC line of server-grade CPUs. The Zen 3 ("Milan") and Zen 4 ("Genoa") EPYC CPUs look like they will continue to pressure Intel's enterprise business. While Milan looks more like a refinement of the current Rome EPYC CPUs, Genoa may bring support for DDR5 RAM and PCIe 5.0.

Current PCBs are eating too much space and researchers think these can easily be replaced with a new silicon-interconnect fabric that would lead to more powerful devices in reduced form-factors. The use of such new fabrics would also cut production costs and improve heat dissipation. Smartphone SoCs and servers may also benefit from the more streamlined design introduced with the silicon-interconnect fabric.

LG Electronic's solar energy solutions are in show at the 2019 Solar Power International expo. They include the new NeON R ACe Solar Panel, which comes with its own AC micro-inverter so as to be compatible with conventional power circuits. It will be available in markets such as the US soon.

Facebook is still persisting with its Portal hardware-based communications platform. The social media company has unveiled three new models including an 8-inch Portal Mini, a 10-inch Portal and a new Xbox Kinect-like Portal TV device designed to turn your living room TV into an AV communications tool.

Huawei also unveiled a new smart TV at its Mate 30 launch. It is called the Huawei Vision, and will come in 55- to 85-inch variants. The OEM asserts that it can also act as a full smart home control, and has AI-powered user interaction.

The Rock Pi X is like a cross between an Atomic Pi and a Raspberry Pi, but even more affordable. Radxa equips the 85 x 52 mm developer board with an Intel Atom x5-Z8300 processor, up to 4 GB of LPDDR3 RAM, along with a host of ports and connections including an HDMI 1.4 that can output in up to 4K. The Rock Pi X has a 40-pin Raspberry Pi compatible header too and supports several OSs including Android, Windows 10, Ubuntu 18.04 and other Linux distributions. The Rock Pi X will start at US$39 and rise to US$75 for the most expensive model.

The NanoPi M4V2, as its name suggests, is a new revision of the NanoPi M4, which FriendlyElec launched last year. The Rockchip RK3399 powered single-board computer (SBC) includes 4 GB of dual-channel LPDDR4 RAM, four USB 3.0 Type-A ports, one USB 2.0 Type-C ports and a 40-pin GPIO header. The board also supports Gigabit Ethernet and up to 802.11 ac Wi-Fi. The M4V2 includes power and recovery buttons too. The NanoPi M4V2 is available to order now for US$70.00 from FriendlyARM, which ships worldwide.

No larger than a smartphone, the NUC 8 Rugged is powered by refreshed Apollo Lake CPUs with ultra-low-power TDPs of only 6 W. Gaming on these systems is clearly out of the question, as the HD Graphics 500 iGPU is only aimed at IoT applications. It comes with 4 GB of RAM and 64 GB eMMC storage. which are both soldered, but users can add an NVMe or SATA SSD through a spare M.2 slot.

The VIM3L is the latest single-board computer that Khadas is bringing to market, with the company targeting the HTPC market this time. The VIM3L is powered by an Amlogic S905D3 SoC along with 2 GB of LPDDR4 RAM, 16 GB of eMMC flash storage and a neural processing unit capable of up to 1.2 TOPS of performance.

A team from MIT CSAIL has developed a solution that can dramatically improve streaming video quality over Wi-Fi networks. Dubbed Minerva, it has been shown to reduce buffering by 50 percent and can even improve image fidelity in around 30 percent of cases.

Shenzhen Xunlong Software is bringing a new, compact SBC to market. The Orange Pi Zero2 is slightly larger than its predecessor and more powerful to boot. The board comes with an Allwinner H6 SoC that integrates four ARM Cortex-A53 cores, 512 MB of LPDDR3 RAM, 4 GB of eMMC flash storage and a host of interfaces, while still weighing just 34 g. Pricing and availability are still unconfirmed but expect it to cost around US$20.

A new report by security experts at Check Point Research demonstrates a glaring vulnerability in modern DSLR cameras: Photo Transfer Protocol. Worse yet, the researchers were able to exploit vulnerabilities in PTP/IP, which transfers photos from a DSLR to a computer wirelessly. This allowed the researchers to infect a nearby DSLR wirelessly and encrypt all of the camera's photos.

After Huawei presented EMUI 10 at its Developer Conference last week, more details about features and innovations have appeared online. A teaser video for the upcoming Android Q-based OS and promotional pictures offer an insight into the redesign, with Huawei having announced the commencement of its beta program too and which smartphones are included.

The Allwinner H2+ powered SBC runs Armbian's Debian and Ubuntu images and measures just 52 x 46 mm. The tiny board features 802.11 b/g/n Wi-Fi, Ethernet, up to 512 MB of RAM, USB 2.0 Type-A and a microSD card slot. There is a 26-pin unpopulated GPIO header too, along with a 13-pin header for headphone, USB 2.0, TV-out, microphone and IR signals. The Orange Pi Zero LTS currently costs between US$8.49 and US$10.49 depending on the version you buy and is available to order on AliExpress now.

Huawei’s in-house HongMengOS is here and its shipping name is officially HarmonyOS. The idea behind the naming is that is a scalable micro-kernal that can work across internet of things devices right through to TVs, wearables and smartphones.

The new form factor is aimed at ultra-mobile devices like smartphones, IoT gateways and embedded systems. XFMEXPRESS NVMe cards will be slightly bigger than microSD cards, but the transfer speeds should match the M.2 form factor devices, with theoretical maximum bandwidths of 4 GBps (first gen) or even 8 GBps (second gen).

A new publication by Microsoft's Threat Intelligence Center points out an increasingly popular avenue used for cyber attacks: the Internet of Things (IoT). The publication states that researchers discovered a new attack that exploited vulnerabilities in simple IoT devices like a printer and a VOIP phone to access an enterprise network.

Huawei’s much ballyhooed in-house operating system HongMeng OS (aka Oak OS) could be revealed this week according to a Chinese report. Although there has been confusion about its capabilities, the same report also suggests we can expect a Huawei smartphone to run the operating system to hit the market before the year’s end.

Think of the Creoqode LYRA as a more affordable version of a Smach Z, GPD Win or GPD Win 2. The 5-inch handheld packs a Raspberry Pi Compute Module 3 Lite that integrates a quad-core ARM Cortex-A53 CPU and 1 GB of LPDDR2 SDRAM, giving it the power to emulate practically any retro games console. The Creoqode LYRA costs £149 (~US$186) and has already reached its funding goal on Kickstarter, with Creoqode aiming to ship to backers in December.

DuckDuckGo, the privacy-focused search engine, has added a few new features to its mapping service. These include improved local searches, support for a Dark Mode, and more. The features were added through Apple's MapKit JS framework, which DuckDuckGo started using in January of this year. DuckDuckGo stated that it remains committed to protecting user privacy and has put into place practices to prevent the sharing of personal information with Apple Maps or any other service.

Researchers at the University of California created an AI that taught itself the shortest solution paths in several different one-goal logic puzzles, including a Rubik's Cube, sliding tile puzzles, Lights out, and Sokoban. While the AI is much slower than human-programmed robots, it gives an interesting look into how AIs arrive at solutions to problems.

The internet celebrated the arrival of the Raspberry Pi 4 last month, with its more powerful SoC, USB Type-C port, dual 4K HDMI and up to 4 GB of RAM. However, a few issues are rearing their head, with the Pi Foundation being quick to shut one of the more concerning down.

The PanGu is an STMicroelectronics STM32MP1 powered single-board computer (SBC), which should offer good value for money for some developers. The board runs Debian Jesse and Yocto Linux and is available to order from Taobao for 499 RMB (~US$72.50).

The pi-top [4] allows you to code and program on the move thanks to its 5-hour internal battery life. The device comes with 14 electronic components including LEDs, buttons and programmable sensors, while it even works with an optional 2-in-1 screen and keyboard or an Advanced Vehicle Kit (AVK). The pi-top [4] is available to order on Kickstarter now for US$199 and will shop in November having already reached its US$100,000 funding goal.